I wish Broadway producers and directors went to more large-scale pop concerts: They’d find real inspiration there. I dare say that two of the best musicals I’ve seen in recent months were by Pet Shop Boys and Kylie Minogue.
Now Lady GaGa has announced details for her upcoming Monster Ball Tour, and clearly she’s several steps ahead of our Broadway peeps in terms of redefining the integration of stagecraft and performance.
Here’s what she said about her plans for the tour in an interview with Rolling Stone: “The theatrics and story elements are in the style of an opera. Imagine if you could take the sets of an opera, which are very grand and very beautiful, and put them through a pop-electro lens. The design of the show is very, very forward, very, very innovative. I’ve been thinking about ways to play with the shape of this stage and change the way that we watch things. So what I’ve done is I’ve designed a stage with Haus of GaGa that is essentially a frame with forced perspective, and the frame is put inside the stage. It’s got kind of a triangular inset, like a diamond, and everywhere we’re playing, the dimensions fit this box that I’m bringing, so it’s this giant box that fits into every show. So no matter where I go, my fans get the same experience. So often you go into theaters and there’s ambient light flying in from all sorts of places, and the audience is in different spots, and the stage is in different shapes and lengths and widths and depths, so this is a way for me to control all the light and all of the different elements of the show.”
Two things here. First, I’d love to see the Met Opera’s Peter Gelb hire Haus of GaGa. Second, Lady GaGa doesn’t have to bother with telling a story in her show, which considerably helps, but the larger issue remains: When was the last time a musical’s creative team started blathering about changing “the way that we watch things”? I hear “Spider-Man” was heading in that direction, hence the overhaul of the theater itself, but at this point we may not even see the result.